Guilty North Carolina automotive company facing $10M in fines

(The Center Square) – Rudy’s, a North Carolina manufacturer and seller of automotive parts, has been fined $10 million in criminal and civil penalties for its role in what the industry calls defeat devices.

Violation of the Clean Air Act was cited by U.S. District Court Judge Trevor N. McFadden for the District of Columbia. Prosecutors say Aaron Rudolf, owner and operator of Rudy’s Performance Parts Inc. in Burlington, made, sold and installed devices “used to remove or disable required emissions controls in motor vehicles,” the U.S. Department of Justice says.

Rudolf pleaded guilty and accepted a criminal fine of $2.4 million; in April, he was ordered to pay a $600,000 criminal fine. He’s admitted to conspiracy to violate the law through tampering with approximately 300 diesel trucks, a release says.

A civil suit filed in 2022 says he manufactured, sold and installed the devices and did not “adequately respond to the EPA’s formal requests for information,” the DOJ said of the Environmental Protection Agency efforts.

Rudy’s and Rudolf owe $7 million in civil penalty. A proposed consent decree prohibits he and the company “from making, selling, offering to sell and installing defeat devices, transferring intellectual property that would allow others to make or sell defeat devices and investing in or profiting from defeat devices manufactured or sold by other businesses.”

Court approval of the decree is pending. The civil suit says from 2014, and possibly earlier, through middle of 2019, Rudy’s and Rudolf made and sold more than 250,000 products “designed to remove or disable EPA-mandated emissions controls.”

Delete tuners, devices tampering with on-board diagnostic systems, were a big seller from the company. The Mini Maxx and XRT Pro were the name brands, followed by an imitation tuner derived in conjunction with purchase of an $850,000 laptop, the Justice Department said.

In a statement, U.S. Attorney Sandra Hairston for the Middle District of North Carolina said, “Tampering with emissions controls adds excess pollutants to the air we breathe and harms both public health and the environment. Settlements like these are essential to hold entities who violate the Clean Air Act accountable and to prevent harmful air pollution.”